Week Two: FLICK | The Double Life of Veronique, 1991, Directed by Krysztof Kieslowski

In high school, I was a projectionist at the local indie movie theater, and The Double Life of Veronique was one of the movies that I projected. I assembled it from six reels into one giant strip of 35mm film, on the projector’s feed platter. Then I watched it over and over and over. Each time I ran it, a layer of its construction fell away, revealing yet another. This movie educated me in a way that felt effortless. It’s about a drop dead gorgeous, young woman who is haunted by her drop dead gorgeous, doppelgänger. Or is it just her self, looped back in time? I’ll never know, but either way, it is, at once, melancholic and joyful.

I want to be careful about not using these weekly suggestions to eulogize, given the current mournful void of normalcy we find ourselves in. Perhaps we’re beyond the mourning and making new modes of normalcy anyway. Yes, this week’s selections are from musical elders that we’ve lost, or who are facing hardship in these difficult times. Despite being texturally or lyrically morose, chaotic, obtuse or desperate at times, each of these albums feel like an exaltation of the irrepressible creative force of existing in spite of your circumstances. Actions creates something ancient and eternal by germinating the stratospheric spirit of Don Cherry in Krzysztof Penderecki’s existential substrate… perhaps that’s too graphic; not to be grokked passively. Paix begins deceptively with with two relative vignettes before the atmospheric liturgy of its title track and the side-long expanse of the ecstatic and apt “Un jour… la mort.” Catherine Ribeiro is still with us, thank goodness. Bill Withers untangles the psychic labyrinth and brings us back to a sun-warmed stoop in a familiar neighborhood. Not sure how to elaborate on this one, but it feels a lot like inheriting a good jacket from a grandparent– satisfied knowing that it’s serving you just as well as it served them. – DT